1. From the Philosophy handout just distributed today:

"A human being who is weaned from all attachment to internally unstable
pursuits such as love, sexual activity, power-seeking, and
money-making is automatically at the same time rid of many of the most
common grounds of value conflict. In part, the superior harmony of the
philosopher's life results directly from this reduction in the number
of his or her commitments. The pursuit of mathematics and the pursuit
of love will not come into conflict for a mathematician who does not
care about love or a lover who does not care about mathematics. But
the philosopher or mathematician's particular choice of content
contributes powerfully, too, to his harmonious condition. He chose
these pursuits precisely because they were always available and did
not require any special conditions for their exercise. He can think
about theorems in all kinds of circumstances; they are always
available for his activity, regardless of his political circumstances,
regardless of the activities and attachments of other human beings. So
how often will he be forced to make a painful choice? The
self-sufficiency of individual pursuits leads, then, to a reduction in
conflict."

2. About the LinuxChallenge

I'm going to go nuts. Actually, I'm going to be cramming tomorrow. Not
good. I don't think I'll win it, but it's worth a shot anyway. I'll
probably be able to get some form of parsing up and running - ignore
the context-sensitive ones first, make that a TODO.

Good thing I found a basic Nemeth math reference, but calculus isn't
covered. Will have to pass by Resources for the Blind. Hopefully they
have ASCII Braille.

4. Mail

I spent a fair bit of time reorganizing my mail into gnus fancy group
splitting thingamajigs. Wasted time, since I'd actually done this
before but hadn't backed up my config. Grumble grumble.

It's not easy juggling 75 mailing lists, but I manage with Emacs. ;)
Must check into how much time I actually spend reading mail and
whether I can arrange to swap digests with a friend instead - not that
I know anyone who's even remotely into the sort of stuff I
do.. Must find other geeks with similar interests.

5. Tomorrow

Wake up, fetch mail. Get parsing and propertizing done in the morning,
so that satisfies part 1 and most of part 2. Go to Philosophy class at
1:30, so that it's straight class until 6. Record audio. Add keyboard
shortcuts in the evening, satisfying part 3.

6. Wireless notes

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Page: 2002.12.11

Updated: 2004-11-2106:44:1306:44:13-0500

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